With Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn expected to win renomination next week, his campaign on Tuesday began moving ahead with plans for the fall general election, including naming a longtime aide as his campaign manager. Quinn, seeking a second elected term after being elevated to the post following the 2009 impeachment of now-imprisoned Rod Blagojevich, named Lou Bertuca as his campaign manager. Bertuca began as a traveling aide when Quinn was lieutenant governor and moved to a...

By Joseph Kolb ALBUQUERQUE N.M. (Reuters) - A former campaign manager for New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez faces a year in prison for sending private emails to her political rivals, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office said on Tuesday. Jamie Estrada, who worked as Martinez's campaign manager in 2009, pleaded guilty in federal court on Monday to unlawful interception of electronic communications and making false statements, said the spokeswoman,...

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's presidential election favorite Enrique Pena Nieto has won a resounding victory in Sunday's election, his campaign chief said as exit polls showed him leading by a wide margin. Luis Videgaray told Mexican television Pena Nieto had won, and added his campaign were still checking results. (Editing by Eric Walsh)

A proposed state constitutional amendment that would ask Illinois voters this fall to create an independent body to draw new legislative boundaries is at risk of not making the ballot following an initial review of petition signatures by state elections officials. Rupert Borgsmiller, executive director of the State Board of Elections, said Tuesday that the required review of 5 percent of the 507,500 signatures submitted by the Yes for Independent Maps campaign found less than 46...

MEXICO CITY, Aug 12 (Reuters) - An opposition politician elected in Mexico's July 1 vote and his campaign manager were found shot to death in a truck early Sunday morning in the central state of San Luis Potosi, which has seen a spike in drug gang-related violence in the past week. Edgar Morales, a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) who won the mayoral race in Matehuala, and Juan Hernandez were ambushed by gunmen after leaving a birthday...

BOGOTA (Reuters) - A candidate in Colombia's presidential elections next Sunday has called on the leading opposition candidate, Oscar Ivan Zuluaga, to quit the race after new video evidence of spying by his campaign consultant on peace talks with leftist rebels. Zuluaga's recent surge in polls of voter intentions could be challenged after local press published a video showing him and a former campaign manager being briefed about government intelligence by a...

The campaign manager for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Doug Ross has resigned, citing personal reasons. Blois Olson left to be with his mother, who lives in Minnesota and has health problems, new campaign manager Leslee Fritz told The Oakland Press of Pontiac in a story Sunday. Fritz said the move had nothing to do with the effectiveness of Ross' campaign and said Olson might return. Ross, a former state senator and state commerce director under Gov. James Blanchard, is one of four...

BOGOTA (Reuters) - A Colombian broadcaster said on Wednesday it was offered information on peace talks with leftist rebels by an opposition campaign official and a hacker arrested for spying on the negotiators. The official, a campaign manager for right-wing presidential candidate Oscar Ivan Zuluaga, resigned late on Wednesday. TV channel RCN News said that it was contacted last month by Luis Alfonso Hoyos, the campaign manager, who visited the RCN...

Wesley Clark's campaign manager quit Tuesday in a dispute over the direction of the Democratic presidential bid, exposing a rift between the former general's Washington-savvy advisers and his 3-week-old Arkansas campaign team. Donnie Fowler, 35, told associates he was leaving over widespread concerns that supporters who used the Internet to draft Clark into the race are not being taken seriously by top campaign officials. Fowler also complained that the campaign's message and methods are...

(This version of the story corrects April 25 story to political consultant Hefner is Torlakson's campaign manager instead of Tuck's, paragraph 17) SACRAMENTO, California (Reuters) - The race to be California's superintendent of education is shaping up to be an expensive contest between fellow Democrats - one backed by the party establishment and teachers unions, and the other calling for school reform. Former charter school executive Marshall Tuck said...

By Barbara Liston ORLANDO, Jan 21 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's 2012 campaign chief, Jim Messina, has joined the Florida gubernatorial campaign of Charlie Crist in a sign that the Democratic party is gearing up for a big political battle to win the state in 2014. "It signals that the national Democratic Party machinery is going to be behind Crist. It erases all doubts of that," said Susan MacManus, a longtime Florida political...

Beyond the pothole-scarred streets and backs broken by endless snow shoveling, there's another casualty of Chicago's brutal winter: political yard signs. At this point in a campaign season, those colorful expressions of candidate promotion typically have proliferated like weeds on the side of the road at major intersections and on enthusiastic voters' lawns. Not this year. Low interest in Tuesday's primary election is one reason. There's no presidential race, and there are few...

Lawrence N. Hansen, a longtime associate of Adlai Stevenson, says he is stepping down as campaign manager of Stevenson's gubernatorial campaign for personal reasons. Hansen, who lives in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C., said, "My request for a new assignment was prompted by one factor: a desire after nine months to be closer to my family and home in northern Virginia. The commute proved longer, costlier and more impractical than I had anticipated last September." "It's been...

With Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn expected to win renomination next week, his campaign on Tuesday began moving ahead with plans for the fall general election, including naming a longtime aide as his campaign manager. Quinn, seeking a second elected term after being elevated to the post following the 2009 impeachment of now-imprisoned Rod Blagojevich, named Lou Bertuca as his campaign manager. Bertuca began as a traveling aide when Quinn was lieutenant governor and moved to a...

(Repeats March 2 story with no changes in text) By Alistair Scrutton and Frank Jack Daniel AHMEDABAD, India, March 2 (Reuters) - Amit Shah is charged with three counts of murder. He is also a key election campaign manager and close aide of Narendra Modi, the frontrunner to become India's next prime minister. To supporters, Shah's proven talent in winning elections makes him the obvious choice to run Modi's campaign in Uttar Pradesh, a swing...

Lake Forest has passed a resolution, which may be the state's first, urging voters to learn about efforts to put an amendment on the November ballot calling for an apolitical means of changing legislative district boundaries. Yes for Independent Maps began a statewide campaign last summer to collect signatures from 300,000 registered voters by May 4 to put the question to voters. Maps' campaign manager, Michael Kolenc, who recently addressed the Lake Forest council, said...